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Sorcerous Workings: Where We Make Judgments

10-27-2015, 08:50 PM

I figured we could use a thread for people to propose sorcerous working examples that aren't explicitly spelled out in the examples given to us in the corebook, and then have one another judge what Circle and Ambition we believe that working should be. So, I'll get us started with my own proposal!

Say I wanted to give myself an eternal lifespan with a sorcerous working. What Circle do you believe would be required for that, and at what level of Ambition? Obviously there would be caveats to the lifespan due to the limitations of sorcery, but how do I get there in the first place? Or what if I merely wanted to use it to double my lifespan with a one-time working?

Double your lifespan, I'd say Celestial 2, like giving yourself a power. For longer, it really depends on the caveats and flaws. Do you have to bathe in the blood of virgins, drink a potion of rare ingredients, etc? Do you live for ever but still age?

These are ones my players have suggested, I'm interested to see if my rulings were the same that others would suggest:

The ability to turn into a dragon at will

The ability to turn intangible at will

Making a dragon the size of a large horse to ride

Making caves with 90 dragon eggs in them. The dragons hatch into full-sized dragons after about 5 years, but only a dozen eggs hatch each time, though you can hatch an egg early by using Resources 5 of special reagents. The dragons can be bonded with by spending a season doing special songs and rituals (I might have got the exact numbers wrong). They don't breathe fire, but they do spit a searing tar-like substance.

Making a set of magical mirrors (one big one, 3 or 4 small mobile ones). Spirits reflected in them are revealed, with chains pointing to their binder. The mirror-master can create copies under his control of anyone the mirrors have seen, but these copies have to stay in sight of the big mirror. He can allow spirits to possess and control the copies.

Making a ghost immune to binding. Possibly only when he's in his temple-manse.

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I can, however, ask something I think is either going to be a fundamental gimmick to my first or second characters:

Permanently enchanting an Artifact gauntlet that, when fed the proper reagents and motes, gains the ability to summon the Things That Dwell In Corners (living shadows that emerge from sleep and flit around spookily when demons have tainted Creation, for those who don't know) and reforge them into a great armor for the wielder for the next couple hours-ie, a portable, if difficult-to-refuel, warstrider.

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The Dragon... well, it's a (western) Dragon. It's big, so has big stats, it flies, it breathes fire, it has thick scales. Dragon stuff. It's not human intelligent, but more intelligent than most animals.

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I can, however, ask something I think is either going to be a fundamental gimmick to my first or second characters:

Permanently enchanting an Artifact gauntlet that, when fed the proper reagents and motes, gains the ability to summon the Things That Dwell In Corners (living shadows that emerge from sleep and flit around spookily when demons have tainted Creation, for those who don't know) and reforge them into a great armor for the wielder for the next couple hours-ie, a portable, if difficult-to-refuel, warstrider.

Personally, I'd say that sounds much more like an Evocation than a sorcerous working.

"Wizard of Oz, you really are a wizard!"

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@The Wizard of Oz: The dragon would either be Terrestrial Circle and Ambition 3 if it were mostly a flying dinosaur with fire breath, I would think. If you wanted something more like a Dungeons and Dragons nightmare beast who could take on Octavian or Ahlat, it would be Celestial Circle and Ambition 3.

Okay, I have another one. Say I had a small city in the mountains and I wanted to use a working to create an battle group of golems or terracotta soldiers to protect it. What Circle and Ambition would that be?

Revlid wrote:
Yes, hollowing out your humanity to become an utterly utilitarian asura is the exact suggestion I would expect from you, Aiden.

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@The Wizard of Oz: The dragon would either be Terrestrial Circle and Ambition 3 if it were mostly a flying dinosaur with fire breath, I would think. If you wanted something more like a Dungeons and Dragons nightmare beast who could take on Octavian or Ahlat, it would be Celestial Circle and Ambition 3.

Okay, I have another one. Say I had a small city in the mountains and I wanted to use a working to create an battle group of golems or terracotta soldiers to protect it. What Circle and Ambition would that be?

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Here's what I'd suggest. When you're using rituals to enhance someone or something, they grant new abilities, they don't improve existing ones. You can ensorcel yourself or a mortal to breathe fire. That works out to something like The Burning Name: it gives you a Flame attack. Ambition 2 Celestial Working with Finesse 3 could probably manage something like the Burning Name that requires you speak a name in order to use it. Finesse 5 loses the catch and lets you breathe flame at will.

But hey, let's consider the case that a shikari of the Wyld Hunt loses an arm. Here's a case where you're not really granting someone a "new" ability at all. As it turns out, fixing dismemberment is a good deal easier than fire breath, since it's very similar to the Extra Limbs mutation. Now, this is not the sort of thing you want to open to Storyteller control, so you might want to go Finesse 5, Ambition 2 Terrestrial working. A well-equipped, skilled Dragon-Blooded sorcerer could manage this in a month or two. Success might mean a limb of living wood grows from the subject's torso and acts according to his will. What it doesn't mean is "his arm grows back." The minimal sorcerous solution is always weird or remarkable in some fashion, in my opinion, but it's up to the ST.

Maybe that's not good enough. Maybe he wants a limb sturdier than flesh that can turn aside even the magical materials and crush the necks of Anathema. This is supernatural territory, so it becomes an Ambition 2 Celestial working. A dragon-blooded sorcerer would be facing difficulty 7 rolls over the course of a year or more to attempt this, and it might not work.

If a malevolent Anathema master of their dark sorceries got his greedy paws on this poor hero of the Realm, things could take a turn for the strange. He could rip out the Terrestrial's soul and put it into a completely new body, for instance... or actually give the poor guy his arm back, by restoring his entire body to the prime of youth.

As for stuff like "turn into a dragon at will"... okay, that's a Celestial Ambition 2, definitely. With success, and with catches appropriate to your Finesse, you now have the ability to turn into a dragon. It's a you-sized dragon, and if you're not careful you might not be able to turn back into a human, and it doesn't have any abilities you didn't already have. You are a really unremarkable dragon.

If what you mean is "I want claw attacks and scales", that's two terrestrial workings. If you want to breathe fire, that's a celestial on top of it. If you want to switch in and out of this dragon form at will, another celestial on top of that. You're really better off attempting a single Ambition 3 celestial working to make a brand new dragon minion, and investing in some social charms to keep him YOUR dragon minion.

So... you want to live forever? Solar Ambition 1 or 2, depending on your approach, I think. If you want to change yourself into the ideal vision of a dragon in your head, including reasonably large size, scales, claws, fire breath, and immunity to the ravages of age, that's Ambition 2. Even a Dragon-Blooded could attempt a working like that, and I'll bet the Empress completed one (though she spends most of her time in her drop-dead-gorgeous-redhead form, and who can blame her). If you merely want to put your soul into that of an unfeeling automaton, exchanging your intimacies for the capacity to endure as long as the Imperial Mountain, Ambition 1. Beware Cup Boils Over. If you think that might go a bit too far, and instead merely replace your own heart with a sorcerous artifice of cold iron that beats once every time you take a human life, and needs beat only once every year, Ambition 1. If all these trade-offs are a little too scary for you, you can always restore yourself to the prime of youth and continue to exist as a merely-Exalted creature who will not die for another two thousand years or until someone fills you full of stabs. No gimmick! No catch! No weakness! Aside from stabs.

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I would like to have my players fight a vizzerdrix.* Granted I could always make it a demon, or some monster from the Wyld, but I kind of want it to fit close to the original source material and I figure a working would give justification on why it might be a one time thing.

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As for stuff like "turn into a dragon at will"... okay, that's a Celestial Ambition 2, definitely. With success, and with catches appropriate to your Finesse, you now have the ability to turn into a dragon. It's a you-sized dragon, and if you're not careful you might not be able to turn back into a human, and it doesn't have any abilities you didn't already have. You are a really unremarkable dragon.

If what you mean is "I want claw attacks and scales", that's two terrestrial workings. If you want to breathe fire, that's a celestial on top of it. If you want to switch in and out of this dragon form at will, another celestial on top of that. You're really better off attempting a single Ambition 3 celestial working to make a brand new dragon minion, and investing in some social charms to keep him YOUR dragon minion.

Huh, that's a good way to do it, multiple workings for the different things...
Anyway, in the end, he didn't get that power, because I thought it was too powerful as one working, that's why he then went and made the dragon minion instead.